DESIGNER HARVEST POWELL IS ON THE FRONT LINE OF A TURNING POINT IN FASHION, WRITES JANICE BREEN BURNS.
Harvest Powell
Melbourne plus-size brand Hope and Harvest will open New York Fashion Week Plus (NYFWP) runway show series today. Designer Harvest Powell won the covetted slot with her Halcyon Days spring/summer 15/16 collection she describes as: “Very chic, a bit seventies, a bit boho with a relaxed, luxury kinda vibe.” And, so it is. A lush, graphic patterned kimono, ankle skimmer lace column dress and elegant flat-front cigar trousers featuring deep side pockets, are among the highlights of the 15-exit show in New York. “I’m extremely proud of what we’ve achieved,” the designer said, “But, I did have to have a quiet moment to sit down and take it all in.”
Hope and Harvest
NYFWP is an independent event running separately, but at the same time as, the main New York Fashion Week. The small show schedule of just two runways a day, is aimed at fashion buyers for women sized 12 to 28, the ironic majority estimated at 60 per cent of women, neglected until recently by mainstream fashion.
Recent industry reports suggest NYFWP is evidence a long-overdue swell of logic is underway among fashion manufacturers and retailers. Many pundits predict the industry will never be the same as events such as NYFWP and Fuller Figure Weeks in the US, and Curvy Couture, run here on the Melbourne Fashion Festival cultural schedule, highlight fashion’s odd fixation with size 8.
The switch to what is sometimes described as “reality fashion”, that is, on-trend clothes cut to fit the majority of women, is being fuelled by a rise in plus-size fashion social media and a brace of buxom influencers including Beth Ditto, Christina Hendricks, Adele, and more recently, Rebel Wilson and Melissa McCarthy.
Harvest Powell is also playing a crucial role in the tide-turning movement. The statuesque, size 20, platinum blonde couturier left an award-winning career, encouraging technical skills among Queensland TAFE fashion students, to move to Melbourne in 2008. An horrific tram accident skuttled her work plans but her consolation prize was plenty of time to plan a new brand while she recovered. It would fill a gap she encountered every day she shopped for her own clothes. “You know, people think when you get to a certain size, you just want to cover yourself up with a big flowery tent.”
Well, she would not design tents. Harvest’s inspirations were, contrarily, some of her own favorite brands: Ann Demeulemeester, Comme des Garcons, Jean Paul Gaultier and Donna Karan among them. “I say it’s not about the size, it’s about how you wear it.”
From the 1970s inspired Halcyon Days collection from Hope and Harvest by Harvest Powell
She built Hope and Harvest from a tiny online business catering to grateful customers from Sydney to Wisconson. “We literally started by putting up four (designs) on line and when someone bought one, we’d have the money to buy fabric to put another one up.” The brand is headed by Harvest with her partner and deputy Leigh McCann, an ex defence forces commander who oversees production, split 60/40 between a studio in Ballarat and Fair Trade factories in India and Vietnam. “At the moment, we’re about to burst,” Harvest says. “We’re at that point where we’re about to jump….”
Jump, in fact, into a rosy future. She says Hope and Harvest grew 385 per cent in just the past year and has attracted interest from a major department store. And, the reasons for her romping success, apart from a relentless regime of hard work and ploughing profits back into the business, Harvest believes, is a matter of comparison. “A lot of plus-size designers are complacent, so women aren’t getting a good fit, or basically, fashion,” she says. “I’m a bit of a perfectionist.”
She “road-tests” her own samples and carefully harvests (pun intended) reviews from a group of test models of various sizes. “I also designed our own block and changed the grading because traditional grading just doesn’t work.” Her mid-priced (eg: $250 for a lace column, $198 for an anorak) day, work and after-5 wear for sizes up to 28, in other words, are not simply graded-up versions of size 12s. The way women’s bodies change – arms, legs, bellies, breasts – as they expand, are accommodated by manipulating sleeve widths, stress points, pockets, waist placements, ruched easements (always toward the back to ensure a flat front and avoid puffiness), hem lengths, button placements, and a raft of other details that pop up with every new season’s offering.
Date Night
Because Harvest has a particular soft spot for figure-hugging designs, fabric selection is also more crucial than in the average mainstream collection. A fabric’s weight, handle and tendency to skim and smooth rather cling and bunch are particularly sought after. The brand’s signature Date Night dress, for example, is a buxom bombshell’s dream with a Jessica Rabbit-esque silhouette only a woman with ample curves can pull off.
Naturally, it sells like proverbial hotcakes and is included, updated, in Harvest’s show today. (New York time; Thursday evening.)
Janice Breen Burns, jbb@voxfrock.com.au
